⚠️ Historical Documentation Notice
This document is part of a historical archive and is presented for scholarly research and educational purposes.
The content reflects historical perspectives and should be understood within its historical context.
Documents on Auschwitz
Robert van Pelt
Eminent
Dutch author of Auschwitz:
1270 to the Present
(Yale
University Press)
Robert
Jan van Pelt, Professor of Cultural History, School of
Architecture, University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2L
3G1
Auschwitz:
1270 to the Present
Robert
Jan Van Pelt Deborah Dwork
WHEN
Auschwitz was transformed into a museum after the war,
the decision was taken to concentrate the history of the
whole complex into one of its components parts. The
infamous crematoria where the mass murders had taken
place lay in ruins in Birkenau, two miles away. The
committee felt that a crematorium was required at the end
of the memorial journey, and Crematorium I was
reconstructed to speak for the history of the
incinerators at Birkenau.This program of usurpation was rather detailed. A chimney, the ultimate symbol of Birkenau, was re-created; four hatched openings in the roof, as if for pouring Zyklon B into the gas chamber below, were installed, and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt using original parts.
There are no signs to explain these restitutions, they were not marked at the time, and the guides remain silent about it when they take visitors through this building that is presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened.
From:
Auschwitz: 1270 to the
Present, Robert Jan van Pelt and
Debórah Dwork, Yale University Press, London
1996, p. 364.
Pelt Index
David
Irving notes:
Jan Van Pelt is to be called as an expert witness by Professor Deborah
Lipstadt‘s defence lawyers in my libel action against her. I invite my many friends in the academic world to contribute now what they know about this Holocaust scholar.